Dad was a model of persistence, just like Calvin Coolidge

I enjoyed Jeff Jacoby’s column on the various former Massachusetts governors whose portrait could go on the wall of Maura Healey’s office (“An ideal muse for Healey’s mantel,” Ideas, April 23).

As it happened, the governor broke from tradition and, inspired by a submission from students in an essay contest, chose an empty frame. Jacoby had quoted his pick, Calvin Coolidge: “The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.’’

I would add another quote attributed to Coolidge: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.”

My late father, Bernard Davidson, had that posted on our childhood refrigerator. He personified Coolidge’s idealism and persistence like no one I have ever known. He was a son of Russian and Romanian immigrants who moved eight times while growing up poor in Dorchester. He so loved the state that gave him equal opportunity, he penned a ditty called “Massachusetts (Because of You Our Land Is Free).” He sang it at the State House in 1988 and promptly made Boston Magazine’s Worst of Boston list.

But he believed in Coolidge’s dictum of persistence and kept promoting the song, and in 1989 it was signed into law by Governor Michael Dukakis as the official patriotic song of Massachusetts.

My father was also repeatedly defeated over a 10-year bid to regain his post as public works commissioner for the Town of Randolph, even appearing in local newspaper police blotters for leaning a sign against a tree (ironic, because he also was an environmentalist who spearheaded many campaigns protecting trees). Finally, he was victorious and retook the post, which he held for 11 years until he died.

As Jacoby notes, Coolidge’s legacy of following one’s dreams no matter what is something to uphold (be it on a governor’s wall or a refrigerator). I’ve seen that firsthand.